How do I delete duplicates, get rid of (!) marks and get Itunes to see 'lost' songs?

[jasonmarkward]

Hi,

I recently lost 500gb of tunes from an external drive. I thought I had a backup but when I tried to Add to Library and selected this I ended up with over 7000 duplicates!

I bought a copy of Dupin and ran it but then I ended up with hundreds of ! marks where songs used to be!

I started over by deleting all the songs from iTunes and trying Add to library from my backup again and now I have duplicates and the ! marks. Often when I search for the songs with the ! marks using SPotlight I can find them but iTunes can't seem to find them for some reason.

Any ideas about how I might be able to repair my iTunes?
I was going to try the Consolidate feature but I heard that this only works with purchased tunes and messes up the library for other stuff.
I'm using iTunes 9.0.2 and have Dupin 2.0.6. My backup is on an external drive, where I had previously just made a copy of my iTunes Music folder.
I'm trying to restore by using Add to Library and selecting the backup Music folder.
In Preferences, I have copy to iTunes library selected and my iTunes library is my new hard drive (not the old one with the backup files).
I have 'Keep iTunes Media organised' unselected because I heard that it messes with the locations. Help!

Thanks,

Jason.

[gierran]

Why don't you try

1. Create a new iTunes Media folder location on the ext HD and enable 'Keep iTunes Media folder Organised' and 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library' in iTunes/Preferences/Advanced.
2. Drag all the songs you wish to add to the library from wherever they are.
3. Wait for itunes to finish adding them into the new Library and copying them into the new Media folder.
4. Delete the old music locations and old iTunes library.

Would that accomplish what you want to achieve?

In general, it is a good idea to let iTunes manage and file your music. When you add more music, simply drag it straight to the iTunes icon, and it will copy straight into the iTunes Media folder. Never delete anything from the media folder using Finder. Delete songs within iTunes, and tell itunes to move the files to the trash, you can't go wrong.

[jasonmarkward]

Hi Gierran,

Thanks for such a helpful reply. I was warned about using this method because its supposed to cause problems with non-bought MP3s but the setup I have doesn't currently work very well so I have nothing to lose really.

I'm trying it now -but it's taking forever to respond. I'll let you know if it works. Many of the duplicates are not actually duplicate files but duplicate references to the same file, so I'm hoping your solution might fix this. I'm also hoping that there won't be any (!) symbols if iTunes is adding the files and managing them itself. Let's see...

J

[denvers]

I recommend Clone Remover. This is program for finding music files. It has the following ways to search for duplicate files: search by content, search by properties, files with a zero size.
find duplicates in iTunes